


Born from Hope

by futurelounging



Series: FuLo's Other Outlander Tales [10]
Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Babies, F/M, Motherhood, New motherhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-27 13:33:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17767721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/futurelounging/pseuds/futurelounging
Summary: A ShowVerse story about Brianna and Jem in the few weeks after his birth while she is at River Run, waiting for her parents to return with Roger.





	Born from Hope

She stretched his hand open, flattening his palm against her own. He wanted to keep it curled up, his entire body fighting to stay in the position it had been in for nine months. Her thumb pressed lightly against the back of his hand, and his tiny wrinkly fingers with jagged paper-thin nails stretched out and barely reached to the center of her palm.

_Who are you?_

He had been a body growing within her, a physical presence impossible to ignore. But now, his eyes darting from her face to her hair to her fingers held up before him, it suddenly hit her that he was a person. He would grow to have his own peculiarities and desires. His very own way of looking at the world. A world that she hardly knew anything about. And with this thought came a flood of others, unbidden.

_How can I teach you when I hardly understand it myself? What dangers lie ahead for you if you can’t return through the stones? Will you ever know? Will you ever know him?_

Phaedre drifted quietly through the room, her body passing through the beams of afternoon light, cutting flickering shadows over Brianna and her son. “Shall I get a fresh clout for him, Miss Bree?” She held her arms out, ready to grab the squirming boy.

“Oh,” Bree looked up, embarrassed at her lack of instinct. She should know this, shouldn’t she? Know to always be thinking about his needs, and yet, she felt driftless, her mind floating just above the earth. “Yes, could I… Will you show me how you do it? I’ve not been around many babies yet.” She suddenly felt foolish. How useless she must seem, a pang of self-loathing inching its way through her chest.

Had her mother felt this uncertainty? She couldn’t imagine it. Couldn’t imagine Claire Randall asking for assistance with something as simple as a diaper.

Phaedre smiled, her brows locked in a semi-permanent position of mild shock. While Brianna imagined it shock at her ineptitude, Phaedre would not convey to her the truth of it, that she would not expect her to want to take care of such matters. “Yes, Miss Bree.”

Jem’s legs stiffened, his muscles taut, hidden under rolls of fat that stretched his skin tight across his thighs. He grunted, face contorting while a puff of gas left him under the amused gaze of his mother. “Are you quite done? Can we continue now?” His entire body relaxed in reply and she loosened the cloth as Phaedre pointed out the pins.

Phaedre opened her mouth and the beginnings of a warning were lost in the expletive that flew from Brianna’s mouth as an arc of urine stained the front of her dress. Phaedre had a cloth against her immediately and was murmuring apologies but stopped when she felt Brianna’s body shaking. She stepped back and stared.

Brianna doubled over laughing, one arm clutching her middle, the other covering her mouth as she wheezed. “Oh god, I can’t believe that just happened. Oh, my boy, teaching me lessons already, huh?”

Phaedre’s lips quivered as she tried to contain her own laughter and she drew a deep breath. “Yes ma’am, you see, you must always hold a cloth over the boys because they… Well, when the air…”

“Always?”

“Well, often, yes.”

Bree smiled, shaking her head. She remembers then how the boys at parties would disappear into the night, laughing drunkenly while they let loose into the unsuspecting gardens, as if the joy of effortless urinating tapped into something essential to being a man. “Let’s finish this and then I’ll change out of this dress.”

In the days after his birth, Brianna found herself having to inquire after her son’s whereabouts more often than not. He was forever being whisked away, and she wondered if they thought mothers didn’t want to be around their children or if they worried the baby would remind her of Roger.

The question of resemblance was ever on her mind even as she tried to will it away. Once, she’d heard her mother say that all babies look like their father when they’re first born, and she found herself drawing her fingers over Jem’s features, as if her touch could make certain the genetic lines. And when the other possibility snuck into her thoughts, the invasion brutal and revolting, she cursed it and forced it away. In order to keep him away, she’d realized that she needed to keep a door closed in her mind, a part of her cordoned off and quarantined, the door itself reminding her of the violation.

Brianna considered the weeks after she was born, how her own mother must have searched her daughter’s features for the traces of her real father. Would Jem, too, become that to her? A painful reminder of loss. A beautiful remembrance of love.

In between these endless questions, Jem grew. His eyes grew brighter and limbs stronger and when he first smiled at her, she felt the last thread holding her heart together snap. And Jem rushed in, bowling her over like a wave crashing upon the shore. Here, then, was a new love.

She hadn’t expected it. Of course, she had expected to love her child. She had loved him for some time, well before he was born. But she hadn’t known she’d _fall in love_. That looking into his eyes would squeeze her heart and leave her short of breath. That she’d feel an anxious energy when she wasn’t with him that dissolved into relief when they reunited. He wore her out, pulled her heart to its limits and demanded more, stretched the edges of her self until she forgot where those edges once had been.

“You are a gift,” Brianna whispered against the damp heat of Jem’s neck. He was hope come alive.


End file.
